MODE TRANS PORTATION

A Swiss team planning to complete the first round-the-world solar flight next year unveiled a new version of their unique ‘Solar Impulse’ aircraft, which they say could remain in the air indefinitely .. ...
http://solarthermalmagazine.com

AIRSHIPS - Should an airport be certified LEED Platinum?

Should the green building certification system give its highest rating to uses that are laughably inappropriate .. ...

AIRSHIPS - Solar Impulse 2 Unveiled: The Solar Plane That Will Fly Around the World

I saw the first generation of this plane when it flew across the United States last year. Needless to say, it was incredible. It had the wing span of a 747 with a very tiny cockpit for the pilot. This cockpit was not appropriate for the length of flight required to circumnavigate the globe, the team’s.. .. ...
http://solarthermalmagazine.com/2014/04/10/solar-impulse-2-u

Electrovaya Inc. has delivered its next generation of prototype battery packs to Dongfeng Motors (DFM) in China. DFM, a leading Chinese automaker, is embarked on an electric vehicle program which includes two electric vehicle platforms. The Electrovaya battery design enables the same Electrovaya battery to fit both the 2-door and 4-door electric vehicle platforms from DFM.Due to ongoing improvements in the cell manufacturing process, this battery ...
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/04/30140410-evaya.htm

Freescale Semiconductor announced the availability of the industry’s first general market AEC-Q100 qualified intelligent battery sensor to combine three measurement channels, a 16/32-bit MCU, and a CAN protocol module in a single package. Designed to support both conventional and emerging battery chemistries for automotive and industrial applications, the MM9Z1J638 battery sensor measures key battery parameters for monitoring state of health (SOH ...
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/04/20140410-freescale.h

Schematic of mesoporous silicon Image: Donghai Wang/Penn State. Click to enlarge.Researchers at Penn State have devised a new process for the bottom-up synthesis of mesoporous crystalline silicon materials with high surface area and tunable primary particle/pore size via a self-templating pore formation process.The nanosized crystalline primary particles and high surface areas enable an increased rate of photocatalytic hydrogen production from wa ...

After bike lanes were installed in Minneapolis, there were more cars per unit of road space, but still not enough to meet the threshold for congestion.Gretchen Johnson and Aaron Johnson have posted a nice debunking of typical “war on cars” rhetoric over at fivethirtyeight.Johnson and Johnson gathered before-and-after traffic data from 45 miles of streets where Minneapolis installed bike lanes. They also looked at how Brooklyn’s Prospect Park West ...

Filed under: New York Auto Show, Convertible, Performance, ChevroletSupercharged, 6.2-liter V8? Check. Seven-speed manual? Check. Obsession with weight? Check.What did you expect when Chevrolet said it was bringing a new Corvette variant to the 2014 New York Auto Show? Maybe a sticker and trim package, like the C6 Corvette Grand Sport or a tie-in deal like the Black Widow car from Chicago? On the opposite end, maybe there was an even more hardcor ...

CARS - Cadillac's Euro reboot may have implications for US models, sales

Filed under: Car Buying, Europe, Cadillac, LuxuryFirmly on the comeback trail in the US, Cadillac is still trying to get out of the starting blocks in Europe. At the Geneva Motor Show in March, Cadillac' senior execs revealed plans to grow the brand's presence in a luxury market dominated by the big three German marques, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.GM President Dan Ammann says he sees "enormous" potential for Cadillac globally.Over the past 20 ye ...

Danish start-up ECOmove has developed a technology which it says makes it possible to manufacture a carbon-fiber chassis without using special equipment. The first unit has already been shipped to a company in Germany.The greatest challenge for most electrical car manufacturers is to increase the overall range. One solution is to decrease the overall weight of the car, hereby reducing the energy consumption. We have acquired extensive knowledge a ...

CARS - Ford F Series, Chevrolet Corvette Named Most American Cars in New Study

While many Americans quickly peg models like the Ford F150 and the Chevrolet Corvette as the most recognizable American-made vehicles, marketing games played by foreign automakers in recent years .. ...

Lexus will unveil its new luxury compact crossover, the Lexus NX, at the 2014 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition to be held in Beijing, China from 20-29 April. Lexus will exhibit the NX 200t equipped with a newly developed 2.0-liter turbo engine—the first turbo in the lineup—and the NX 300h equipped with a 2.5-liter hybrid system. The NX will also be offered with a naturally aspirated powertrain. Evolved from the “Lexus LF-NX” concept in ...

Golf Sportwagen. Click to enlarge.Volkswagen of America, Inc. will debut a concept version of the latest SportWagen model featuring a 4MOTION all-wheel drive system and the new EA288 TDI Clean Diesel engine (earlier post) at the New York Auto Show. The concept previews the new Golf SportWagen that will go on sale in early 2015. Based on the new MQB (modular transverse matrix) architecture, the Golf SportWagen will continue the trend introduced by ...

MotorBrain prototype. Integrated unit is on the left, the motor core is at the right. Click to enlarge.The four partners in the European research project ”MotorBrain”—Infineon Technologies, Siemens, the Institute of Lightweight Engineering and Polymer Technology at the Technische Universität (Technical University) Dresden and ZF Friedrichshafen—are presenting their first prototype of a lightweight electric motor system that requires no rare earth ...

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a nanocrystalline copper material that produces multi-carbon oxygenates (ethanol, acetate and n-propanol) with up to 57% Faraday efficiency at modest potentials (–0.25?volts to –0.5?volts versus the reversible hydrogen electrode) in CO-saturated alkaline water.The material’s selectivity for oxygenates, with ethanol as the major product, demonstrates the feasibility of a two-step conversion of CO2 ...
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/04/stanford-researchers

FUELS - Worldwatch Institute: global biofuel production fell in 2012 for first time since 2000

World ethanol and biodiesel production. Source: Worldwatch. Click to enlarge.In 2012, the combined global production of ethanol and biodiesel fell for the first time since 2000, down 0.4% from the figure in 2011, according to the Worldwatch Institute’s latest Vital Signs Online report. Global ethanol production declined slightly for the second year in a row, to 83.1 billion liters (22 billion gallons US), while biodiesel output rose fractionally, ...

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which oversees all transportation in the city, today joined the Board of Supervisors, Walk San Francisco, and other city partners and business leaders to celebrate the second annual Walk to Work Day. As part of the City’s commitment to “Vision Zero,” a plan to eliminate all traffic deaths […]The post San Francisco Celebrates Second Annual Walk to Work Day appeared first on EV News Report ...
http://evnewsreport.com/san-francisco-celebrates-second-annu

TRAFFIC - Wisconsin DOT Raises the Cost of Fighting Highway Projects

“Wasteful and unnecessary.” That’s how citizens of Waukesha and Washington counties in Wisconsin have described a state plan to fill in wetlands for an 18-mile road widening project on Highway 164.Highway 164 in Wisconsin, as you can see, is in desperate need of widening. Photo: State Truck TourBut the Highway J Citizens Coalition isn’t taking it lying down. Along with an environmental group, they took the Wisconsin Department of Transportation t ...

It wasn’t a total surprise, but exciting nevertheless for bicycle advocates gathered at the NACTO “Cities for Cycling” Road Show in Oakland last night. Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty announced that the agency will endorse the use of the National Association of City Transportation Officials Urban Street Design Guide, giving a blessing California cities to install modern infrastructure like protected bike lanes.Received with enthusiastic appla ...

TRANSPORT - Survey of power management control technologies for HEVs and PHEVs suggests future need to consider vehicle as part of larger system

A comprehensive survey of major power management control algorithms for hybrid-electric (HEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) proposes that future work will need to consider the vehicle as part of a larger system which can be optimized at an even larger scale.This type of large-scale optimization will require the acquisition and processing of additional information from the driver and conditions outside the vehicle itself, suggests ...

A Swiss team planning to complete the first round-the-world solar flight next year unveiled a new version of their unique ‘Solar Impulse’ aircraft, which they say could remain in the air indefinitely ...

I saw the first generation of this plane when it flew across the United States last year. Needless to say, it was incredible. It had the wing span of a 747 with a very tiny cockpit for the pilot. This cockpit was not appropriate for the length of flight required to circumnavigate the globe, the team’s.. ...

Electrovaya Inc. has delivered its next generation of prototype battery packs to Dongfeng Motors (DFM) in China. DFM, a leading Chinese automaker, is embarked on an electric vehicle program which includes two electric vehicle platforms. The Electrovaya battery design enables the same Electrovaya battery to fit both the 2-door and 4-door electric vehicle platforms from DFM.Due to ongoing improvements in the cell manufacturing process, this battery ...

Freescale Semiconductor announced the availability of the industry’s first general market AEC-Q100 qualified intelligent battery sensor to combine three measurement channels, a 16/32-bit MCU, and a CAN protocol module in a single package. Designed to support both conventional and emerging battery chemistries for automotive and industrial applications, the MM9Z1J638 battery sensor measures key battery parameters for monitoring state of health (SOH ...

Schematic of mesoporous silicon Image: Donghai Wang/Penn State. Click to enlarge.Researchers at Penn State have devised a new process for the bottom-up synthesis of mesoporous crystalline silicon materials with high surface area and tunable primary particle/pore size via a self-templating pore formation process.The nanosized crystalline primary particles and high surface areas enable an increased rate of photocatalytic hydrogen production from wa ...

After bike lanes were installed in Minneapolis, there were more cars per unit of road space, but still not enough to meet the threshold for congestion.Gretchen Johnson and Aaron Johnson have posted a nice debunking of typical “war on cars” rhetoric over at fivethirtyeight.Johnson and Johnson gathered before-and-after traffic data from 45 miles of streets where Minneapolis installed bike lanes. They also looked at how Brooklyn’s Prospect Park West ...

Filed under: New York Auto Show, Convertible, Performance, ChevroletSupercharged, 6.2-liter V8? Check. Seven-speed manual? Check. Obsession with weight? Check.What did you expect when Chevrolet said it was bringing a new Corvette variant to the 2014 New York Auto Show? Maybe a sticker and trim package, like the C6 Corvette Grand Sport or a tie-in deal like the Black Widow car from Chicago? On the opposite end, maybe there was an even more hardcor ...